Control
by sunsetdreamer
Summary: Having it, needing it, losing it, taking it. Sometimes control is a tough thing to manipulate. Completed.
1. Paige

Hey all! As I was - for once - actually doing legitimate work on a paper (swear to God... true story), my trusty ipod decided to take a little Joy Division turn. Which was totally cool until "She's Lost Control" started playing, and then these stupid random ideas started popping into my head. Safe to say, essay time was pretty much finished after that. The plan is to do a series of oneshots, each centering on a different Charmed One, and their POV during moments of the series where situations spun completely outside their realms of control. I started writing Piper first, but then I hit a little bump not even halfway through the first page, sooo the disciplined writer that I am, I gave up and moved on to Paige, lol. I'm predictably unpredictable like that.

* * *

**Control: A Paige From the Past**

**I try to believe," she said, "that God doesn't give you more than one little piece of the story at once. You know, the story of your life. Otherwise your heart would crack wider than you could handle. He only cracks it enough so you can still walk, like someone wearing a cast. But you've still got a crack running up your side, big enough for a sapling to grow out of. Only no one sees it. **_**Nobody sees it**__**.**_** Everybody thinks you're one whole piece, and so they treat you maybe not so gentle as they would if they could see that crack.**

**Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Rebecca Wells**

"_You don't know what you're doing."_

"_Yes, I do… watch out!"_

The truck comes out of nowhere, and before she knows it, she has reappeared outside of the vehicle.

It takes her a moment to process what has happened, but when it finally sinks in, Paige screams, because there are no words to adequately express the pain which is killing her from the inside. She tries to rush forward, but a pair of arms, stronger than she would have thought, hold her back. Regardless of how hard she struggles, she can go no further than Leo allows her.

"Let go of me! I have to save them!"

"They're gone."

She hadn't thought the pain inside her could be any more excruciating, but with Leo's words, Paige learns that the internal degree of pain her body can withstand is infinite. She is going to continue burning alive forever.

"Why did you bring me back here?" She rages, "Why?"

"You were never meant to save them." Leo whispers in her ear. And this only renews her vigour, because he doesn't know what he's talking about. She thrashes violently, and screams again in frustration when she can't manoeuvre herself out of his grasp. Since when was Leo so strong? He continues to speak to her, calmly, rationally, comfortingly, and she can't block out his voice any better than she can escape his grip on her waist.

"You were meant to survive. To help people. To make a difference not only in the magical world, but within a system that often leaves good kids to fend for themselves and ultimately fall through cracks. There are children who have been placed in the good homes they more than deserve due to _your_ tenacity. Due to your passionate insistence that every child coming across your desk be placed in a home that is every bit as loving as the one you were raised in."

What was he even talking about? None of that mattered. Nothing mattered outside of the burning mass of distorted metal just metres away from her. She watches the way the thick plumes of smoke rise from the wreckage and blacken the sky, mocking her, teasing her mercilessly because she hasn't been able to help. She hasn't been able to save her parents, even after going back to live what has passed for the second time. Even when she knew, she KNEW, exactly what was going to happen.

To his credit, he doesn't make any further attempts at speech. He offers no words of comfort, he simply continues restraining her until she can fight him no longer, and cushions her fall as she crumples to the ground. Two bodies, collapsed in the middle of the road. Paige can't help but wish for just a second that the truck which ended her parents' lives would continue its path of destruction to where they are sitting; that it would finish the job it failed to complete eight years ago.

"I don't want this."

Her words are angry, because angry is exactly what she needs to be right now in order to survive this. For the second time.

"I don't want any of it anymore. Magic is cruel… these _powers_," she spits the word as if it is toxic, "are cruel. What is the point, if you can't even use it to save the people you love? What's the point?"

Leo's arms continue to circle her body, but he is no longer restraining her, he is the only thing keeping her from becoming a puddle of jelly on the street. Paige buries her face in his shoulder, and soon feels the damp cold of his shirt on her face as her tears saturate the fabric, but she is too distraught to be embarrassed.

She had believed she could change what happened, believed it could be kept within her control. Eight years of perfect emotional suppression brought to the surface in a moment because she couldn't pay enough attention to notice a truck.

"Not even magic is strong enough to cheat death when a person's time on earth is up. Magic saved the person who was destined to be saved that day; magic saved you."

And she can't help but wonder why. Why it is that _she_ of all people was deemed worthy enough to be given another chance. As a child, it had been almost too easy for her to put all thoughts concerning her biological parents to the back of her mind; she had good parents, and she was a great person, so to hell with whatever family hadn't thought she was good enough to keep. Now, she can't bury her feelings of unworthiness; nothing remains of the only people who ever gave a damn about her when they didn't necessarily have to; the only people who chose to love her.

She doesn't look at the wreck again, she keeps her face turned in the opposite direction and shuts her eyelids tight, but she cannot filter out the smell of the burning tires, nor the heat from the blast that still reaches her skin. And it is while she is crying, breathing shallowly through her mouth in a vain effort to keep the horrible smell at bay, that she realizes she is poison; Sam and Patty must have seen this, so they gave her up, and the parents who raised her are dead because they couldn't. They loved her for who she was, for who they knew she was capable of being, and now she is stuck with a family who only loves her for what she can do. For the second time, the fiercely independent Paige Matthews loses herself to the intolerable feeling of being utterly alone.

"I have no one." She cries into Leo's shoulder, "They were all I ever had."

"You have your sisters."

Paige would have laughed if it didn't currently require so much effort just to breathe. She doesn't have sisters. Phoebe loves everyone who doesn't try to kill her… and some who do, from what Paige has gathered so far. Her affections hardly count as sisterly. And Piper is only now just beginning to consider her a friend, never mind a sister.

"They don't want me."

"Yes they do, Paige."

"They need me." Paige chokes out bitterly, "They don't want me."

Leo shakes his head, knowing that Paige could not be further from the truth, but he says nothing, because he knows his mouth is not the one from which she needs to hear the words. She is, at heart, a Halliwell; she carries the emotional damages of a Halliwell, and because of those damages, she has her own form of defense; Paige hides behind her sarcasm and an assumed air of indifference. She rejects people before they have a chance to reject her, and because of this, because of how negatively Piper can react to what she interprets as indifference, sometimes it is easy to forget that there is a more sensitive soul underneath.

"You have me." He insists firmly.

Paige pulls her face away from his shirt in order to look into his eyes, and the love and concern she sees there only makes her sob harder. He knows so little about her, and he genuinely cares. Even Piper, in her own way, recognizes her as family; and for that reason alone, Paige knows her sister would lay down her life for her. Piper aggressively protects her family, and even if the relationship between herself and Piper is tentative at best, she knows how deeply Piper is capable of loving. She knows there is no questioning the love Piper – a witch – has for her husband. A whitelighter.

And this, now, is why Paige cries. More than anything, Paige cries because as she takes in the heartfelt expression on Leo's face, she is overwhelmed with a simple truth; Piper and Leo embody what it means to fight for what matters. They fought to be a couple, they fought to get married, and she knows without a doubt that any child born of that love will be protected at a level that would make Piper, as she stands now, seem as threatening as a lamp shade. They would move mountains and raise hell on earth if that was what it took to keep their daughter; giving her up for her own safety would not be an option. They would find another way. They would do what Patty and Sam hadn't, because Patty and Sam hadn't cared enough to try.

"They were the only ones who ever wanted me, and I spat in their faces."

"You were just a kid, Paige. It wasn't your fault. None of this has ever been your fault."

She clings to his voice, memorizing his soft words so that she can repeat them to herself later. Because anger is no longer enough, and she needs to find some other way to stay afloat.

So she listens to his voice as she begins pulling the pieces that are Paige back together. Now his words no longer matter; it is his voice. It is the presence of another voice keeping her connected, reminding her that she is only as alone as she wants to be. Reminding her that alone is the way she chooses to be, because she will not feel responsible for any more tragedies, regardless of whether or not, at the end of the day, they are her fault.

The seconds tick by, and the oppressive fluid that has filled her body is replaced with bone and muscle. Seconds more, and her brain resumes its automatic signal firing; she no longer needs to put so much conscious effort into every blink and swallow. In a matter of minutes, the blazing inferno inside her soul has been forced to a dull ache. The same ache she has been living with for the past eight years. An ache she can control. She pulls away from Leo and stands confidently on her own two feet, ignoring the slight vertigo which threatens to overtake her, and smiles weakly as he hovers tentatively by her side.

Then she resigns herself to her survival, and locks what she cannot change back in the appropriate compartment. Until the next time.

"Well, we came, we crashed, we conquered." Her voice wobbles, much more than slightly, but Leo, bless his heart, pretends not to notice, "Let's get out of here."

* * *

_Thanks for reading! I realize I screwed with the script a little on this one, but I was just going with what came to me. It's not meant to be a rewrite, I have no qualms with the original, I'm just pretending that everything following her, "Why did you bring me back here" line happened somewhere between her struggle against Leo and her collapse on the asphalt. I come in peace._


	2. Phoebe

**Control: Long Live the Queen**

**She found, what has been sometimes found before, that an event to which she had looked forward with impatient desire, did not in taking place, bring all the satisfaction she had promised herself.**

**Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen**

"Phoebe, get out here and help us damn it!"

Phoebe's hand reaches for the doorknob, ignoring the violent tremors coursing through fingers that she knows used to be steady and confident as a surgeon's. The only sound coming from inside the bathroom is the sound of her own fingernails tapping against the metallic knob, and she's stuck in limbo, again. Unable to force her hand that extra inch it needs in order to take hold of the handle, and unable to pull her hand back altogether, because doing so would be completely denying the voice of her sister.

There have been signs, especially over the course of the last few days, that an altercation such as this was inevitable. But she has ignored every one of them to stay with Cole, because it hasn't been fair of her sisters to ask her to sacrifice love solely on account of it breaking the rules. And it hurts, because she had supported Piper and Leo during a time when their relationship could have put everyone's lives in serious danger, and this hasn't stopped Piper from asking Phoebe to do what she would never herself be able to.

"_Phoebe, you can't be the Queen of the Underworld and a Charmed One. You can't have it both ways… it's not fair Phoebe, but you have to pick a side."_

Even Leo, who has always been the guiding voice of reason, wants her to do the impossible. His words have been circling her mind since yesterday, and she claps her hands over her ears and shuts her eyes tight, wishing they would go away. Wishing both Cole and her sisters would disappear so that she wouldn't have to pick one or the other. Because the truth is, she does not see how she can be expected to live without the presence of both.

"_You can't save an innocent and free a demon Phoebe, it doesn't work like that."_

She can hear Cole's voice in her head as clearly as if he were currently speaking to her, despite the fact that her head is being gripped so harshly between her hands, it is causing her pain. There had been a time when she prided herself on her free spirited ways, but somehow, she has become a different person. A little less flamboyant, a little less fidgety, and she cannot trade her relationship with Cole for anything, because with him, she feels less restless; more stable. He has given her a love like no one ever has.

"Phoebe, you heard what he said; he's going to kill us. Help us."

The edge to Piper's voice is unmistakeable. Her voice has always been rational, logical, but it is now authoritative and gruff in a way it had never been before Prue died. Prue. Phoebe whimpers slightly at the thought, because sometimes the grief still overwhelms her when she thinks of the older sister she has lost, and she cannot, cannot cannot cannot even think about losing another one.

"_You never answered the chaplain's question."_

"_I never answered your question. Ask me again."_

"_Will you marry me?"_

"_Yes, I will."_

It had all began exactly perfect; maybe not quite the way she had dreamed of proposals and engagements as a child, but perfect nonetheless, and this isn't the way things should have turned out. It isn't the way she pictured them. Marrying Cole should have furthered the happiness she had found while they were dating. Having a baby should mean squeals of excitement from her sisters, and baby showers, and damn it, feelings of a little bit of excitement on her part, instead of as if her whole world is rapidly spinning away from everything she ever even remotely desired. It is all terribly, terribly wrong.

"Please, Phoebe."

The words belong to Paige, but she hears them through Piper's voice, from a time when they were all much younger and could not fathom the places destiny would take them in less than ten years:

_It was 10:00 am on a Saturday morning, and the sound of the door, opening and closing, set her on edge; if it was Prue, coming in to give her some sanctimonious speech regarding the irresponsibility of underage drinking, so help her God. For someone who was supposed to be busy with college, Prue spent an annoying amount of time at the manor._

"_Phoebe?"_

_No, the voice belonged to Piper, and so Phoebe relaxed back into the mattress. Slightly. Just because Piper happened to be, upon occasion, less of a pain in the ass than Prue, did not mean Phoebe was particularly excited for a chat. Especially at this indecent hour._

"_Phoebe, are you awake?"_

_Piper's voice, irritatingly tentative, sets something off in Phoebe, and she pulls the comforter roughly down from its position over her head and glares at her sister._

"_You tell me, Piper. You opened the window for me approximately four and a half hours ago. How awake do you think I am?"_

_Piper shifts her weight from one foot to the other, then simply steps forward and places a pitcher – that, until now, has gone unnoticed by Phoebe – on the nightstand by Phoebe's head._

"_I brought you some water." she says softly, "If you need any Advil later, just let me know."_

_Phoebe sighs, now more annoyed than ever; partially because she is still slightly buzzed, but also because she hates the way Piper is capable of making her feel. The problem with fighting Piper is that she doesn't retaliate the way Prue does. The way anyone else does. And it makes Phoebe feel guilty._

_She makes room on the bed and pulls aside the duvet, "Get in here."_

_Piper smiles, taking the offer the way Phoebe has meant it. It's as close to an apology as Phoebe will ever give._

_Soon the two girls are nestled between the sheets, blankets pulled high over their heads, and as Phoebe is thinking that they are far past too old to be doing this, Piper begins to speak._

"_I opened my acceptance letter today. I'm going to start school with Prue in the fall."_

_Piper's tone is difficult to read, and Phoebe isn't quite sure what she is expected to say to this. The thought of a University education bores her._

"_That's a good thing, right? You and Prue can live together."_

"_I know. I just feel guilty. Leaving Grams alone with…"_

_Her voice trails off, and Phoebe finishes what she can't say. "… with me." She smiles self depreciatingly. _

"_That isn't what I meant, Phoebe." Piper corrects quickly, "I just mean, Grams never knows when you're here, or when you're not… and you know I'm not going to tell, but I just worry…if something ever happens to you, she may not even notice you're gone until it's too late."_

_Her voice is soft, slow, guarded; distinctively enunciating the sound of every letter in that way she does when she is upset. Careful to keep all traces of emotion out of her tone, careful to keep control._

"_I can take care of myself, Piper."_

"_I know you can. I just feel safest when we're all together. And it already feels as if everyone is drifting apart… Prue's never here…_

"_Prue is __**always**__ here." Phoebe interrupts bitterly, "And she still thinks she's Captain of this place. That's something you can count on never to change."_

"_She just worries about you." Piper defends automatically, ever the middle sister, constantly protecting one from the other. Phoebe wonders if she's even aware of doing it anymore._

"_You were saying?"_

"_I can't accept unless I know we're all going to be okay, even if I'm not here. Be extra careful Phoebe, don't disappear on me."_

"_You can't keep us together forever, Piper. As soon as I graduate, I'm out of here. You need to come to terms with that."_

"_Promise me you'll be here until then. Promise me you won't take off just because I won't be here to drag you back."_

"_Piper –_

"_And that after you graduate, if you still want to leave, you visit at least ten times a year. And you call me once a week."_

"_Come on-_

"_Please, Phoebe."_

"_You're being stupid."_

"_**Please**__, Phoebe. Just promise."_

_She may never understand why keeping the family together is so important to Piper, why her and Grams are the only two who can't be satisfied with the thought of holiday dinners and the occasional phone call, but Piper is rarely insistent, and if her agreement is all it will take to make Piper happy, then she is willing to play along._

"_Fine. I promise."_

_It's close to pathetic the way Piper's face lights up at these words, because it doesn't even occur to her that Phoebe could be lying. And that is why, for once, Phoebe plans on keeping her word this time; because of the faith Piper is still willing to maintain in her._

"_I promise."_

"Phoebe! Now!"

Piper doesn't ask anymore, she commands. And her sharp voice filters easily through Phoebe's hands, reminding her that Piper is no longer that person. Reminding her that _she_ is no longer that person. Reminding her that there is a very dangerous situation escalating on the other side of the door; reminding her that her cowardice is about to cost someone she loves their life.

The only problem is, her action, whatever course she chooses, is also, most likely, going to cost the life of someone she loves. Possibly more than one.

And again, she cannot help thinking that it isn't fair. That she shouldn't have to make this choice. She shouldn't have to play God and be the deciding factor, condemning members of her family to die in the very next room. She wants to be safe. She wants to be free. She wants to be sixteen again, with Piper, buried beneath a mountain of covers. She wants to return to a time when Prue symbolized everything that was wrong in her life, because she would do anything in the world to see, for an instant, her pain-in-the-ass sister again.

So here she stands, the moment of truth in a tiny bathroom, and she thinks of her sisters; so full of endless love and forgiveness. Of Paige, so similar to the way she used to be before magic took over; energetic, independent. Of Piper, so determined to appear aloof, in order to mask the fact that she feels so much, so deeply. Of Leo, who loves her so comfortably and easily, she doesn't always remember that she didn't grow up with him as a brother. And finally, she thinks of Cole. Of the man who has loved her with every fibre of his being, and who has only ever acted with her best interest at heart, skewed as those actions sometimes are.

"_I know what you're going through, better than anyone. It will rip you apart if you let it."_

"_How do I not let it?"_

"_You make a choice and you stick to it. Even though it's hard. Even though it means giving up the people that you love."_

And as she listens to the drama unfold in the next room, the choice is made for her, because it was never really a choice to begin with. Because she has known the way it has to end for some time now, but she has been hoping against hope that the burden of responsibility would be taken out of her hands. That she wouldn't have to do the hard thing.

"Forgive me."

Phoebe takes her hands away from her ears and turns the handle.

* * *

_**A/N:** To the best of my knowledge, I ripped off lines from A Paige From the Past (which I conveniently watched like, three days ago, haha) and Long Live the Queen..... all of which are probably at least partially inaccurate, considering I was admittedly far too lazy to do anything more than try to remember the proper lines off the top of my head. Meh. Hopefully this isn't grounds for being shot.... but if it is.... I feel like I deserve bonus points for honesty. _


	3. Leo

**Control: The Seven Year Witch**

…**if, before every action, we were to begin by weighing up the consequences, thinking about them in earnest, first the immediate consequences, then the probable, then the possible, then the imaginable ones, we should never move beyond the point where our first thought brought us to a halt. The good and the evil resulting from our words and deeds go on apportioning themselves, one assumes in a reasonably uniform and balanced way, throughout all the days to follow…**

**Blindness, Jose Saramago**

"_I was thinking maybe, pancakes and eggs; how about you?"_

"_Sounds normal."_

When they ventured down the hall to tend to the boys, as he made faces at his youngest son and gently spun the mobile above his crib, he automatically slipped into a mode where he was half anticipating a call. He was accustomed to the terrible, coincidental timing of the Elders, and as he glanced across the room to where Piper sat beside Wyatt, listening to their intermingled laughter as she tickled him and spoke quietly into his ear, he was already withdrawing, preparing the speech he would have to give Piper; hoping she wouldn't hold it against him. Hoping the Elders would be quick. Hoping it would only be a matter of hours before he could return to this precious scene.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Piper questioned suspiciously. "Where are you planning on running off to?"

"Me? I'm not going anywhere."

"Uh huh, then why are you giving me your, 'I love you, and I know you're angry, but I need to leave anyway' look?"

"I'm not! I'm just…"

Leo's voice slowed to a stop, and he broke into a wide grin as he remembered that he would never again be pulled away from his wife and boys against his own desires.

"…just waiting?" Piper finished, bemused. When he shyly ducked his head, she smiled, "Do you miss it at all yet?"

"No…" he said thoughtfully, "It's just… weird, more than anything. It's been so long since I've been human."

She accepted his words with a nod of understanding, and Leo had lifted Chris from the crib and begun gently tickling his stomach before her voice again broke through the near-silence.

"I love you." She said earnestly.

He smiled again, because he never got tired of hearing her say it. Before he could make the expected reply, she muttered her next words so softly into Wyatt's blond hair, he had to strain to hear her.

"I'm glad you chose us."

He took a deep breath and cradled Chris closer to his body, and wondered, for the thousandth time, how he had ever survived being away from them for so long.

"I will always choose you."

Despite the intended sincerity of his words, they – understandably – triggered a disbelieving quirk of Piper's eyebrow; his disappearance "Up There" a year and a half ago may have temporarily escaped his mind, but it clearly had yet to leave Piper's. Leo couldn't help chuckling at the look on her face, and he chanced a joke, hoping that it wasn't too soon.

"Fine," he amended, "I will always eventually choose you."

"Spoken like a true White Knight." Piper smirked sarcastically.

Ten minutes later they were in the kitchen; Leo at the table with Chris in his lap, and Piper dancing between the pantry, fridge, and everything in between while Wyatt got underfoot. She was feeding off of Leo's buoyant mood; pouring more batter into this pan, and moving eggs out of that, showing off theatrically to the amusement of Wyatt and Chris as she traded delighted smiles with him over their heads. He watched with pride as Wyatt stood on his step-stool and cracked an egg into the pancake mixture with minimal assistance from Piper. Experience has taught Leo that few things put his wife in a bad mood faster than his attempts to "help" her in the kitchen when she hasn't explicitly asked for assistance, but the patience she found when the boys wanted to be involved, was boundless.

Generally, in the kitchen, Piper's eyes were everywhere. She was adept at watching the boys without breaking her whirlwind pace, but today, distracted by the reality of an Elder-interruptus free life, she didn't quite manage to forsee Wyatt's unexpected run through her legs. The shift in balance caused the hot frying pan in her hand to slip, and thinking only of Wyatt, standing directly beneath her, Piper struggled to catch the fumbled pan, allowing it to crash to the floor only once Wyatt was out of harm's way.

"Mother f –

Leo was on his feet in an instant, setting Chris in his high chair and rushing around the island. Wyatt cowered by the fridge door, one finger curled into his mouth, as Piper cursed emphatically under her breath while running the cold water over her scalded forearm.

"You okay, buddy?" Leo asked, his eyebrows furrowed in concern as he checked his son over for burns, "Does it hurt anywhere?"

Wyatt shook his head slowly, and Leo pulled him into a relieved hug before hoisting him up, and carefully sidestepping the mess of heated oil and bacon on the floor. He sat Wyatt on the counter beside the sink and reached gently for Piper's hand.

"Let me see."

The skin on the inside of her left wrist was already beginning to bubble, and she flinched when his finger grazed the flesh near the inflamed area. For the first time that day, Leo was faced with two forgotten facts; actions have consequences, and freedom comes at a price. There would be no quick-fix this time for Piper… and no quick-fix for Wyatt or Chris if his or Piper's reflexes weren't fast enough to divert danger away from them the next time. If Piper hadn't reacted so quickly, this could have been Wyatt's arm, or leg, or face… the thought of his small son sustaining any injury so painful made him shudder.

"Keep it under the water," he murmured, avoiding eye contact, "I'll grab some bandages."

Before he could turn away, Piper cupped his cheek with her undamaged hand and smiled sympathetically. Although she said nothing aloud, her message was clear; _it will be okay. It will heal just fine. Don't ever doubt what you did for us. I love you._

And he wished she would stop touching him, because he deserved to feel guilty about this; he wanted to punish himself for it, and she shouldn't be so quick to forgive. It had never once occurred to him that what he had done, in the interest of his family, would ultimately cost them their safety. Who was going to protect the Charmed Ones now? He couldn't even save his wife from breakfast.

"Ouch?" Wyatt enquired, his large blue eyes seeking assurance from his mother.

"No, sweetheart." Piper smiled, kissing his fingers. "I'm fine."

Then she turned her attention to Leo, "He's okay? No splashes?"

She must have known that Wyatt had to be okay; if he had been in pain, he would have started screaming about it a long time ago. But Piper being Piper, she would worry about it anyway until she looked him over herself.

"He's fine." Leo answered, "Aren't you, Wyatt?" Off the boy's shy nod, he continued, "He just got a little scared."

As the shock wore off, Wyatt's eyes began to fill with tears, "Sorry." He sniffed, "I sorry."

"It's okay baby, mommy should have been watching. But this is why we do not run in the kitchen, okay?" Piper admonished gently.

Leo hefted Wyatt off the countertop with exaggerated effort, "Come on, buddy. You're staying with me; away from trouble."

Once assured that he wasn't in any serious trouble, Wyatt, in that manner so typical of children, quickly recovered from his scare. Before Leo could make it out of the kitchen, he flashed his mischievous grin and orbed out of Leo's arms. When he didn't reappear anywhere within sight, Piper sighed and rolled her eyes.

"Could you maybe put a little effort into finding both our son, and some antiseptic, before my arm freezes off?"

"Of course, honey." Leo replied, pressing a soft kiss to her temple, "Sit tight."

"Uh huh."

He stepped back and tried to follow Wyatt in the way he had done so many times before; only this time, he went absolutely nowhere. Startled, he was about to try again, when his concentration was interrupted by Piper's giggle.

"Not such a fun game when you can't orb out after him, is it?"

Leo scowled, "I feel like you're getting just a bit too much enjoyment out of this."

"It's called Karma, honey." Piper responded, "It's what you get for all the times I flew into a panic when this happened, and you treated me like a theatrical four year old."

He returned her smile with a sarcastic smirk of his own, "Cute, Piper. Really cute."

The day, which had begun with so much promise, was swiftly spiralling downwards. When he had first awoken that morning, rather, truth be told, when _Piper_ had awoken that morning (he had never actually made it to sleep), he had revelled in the all consuming sense of complete freedom. And the silence, oh the glorious silence; his thoughts and emotions were his own for the first time in sixty years, barring his brief "suspension" for healing Piper what seemed like a lifetime ago. He had forgotten what it was like to just be human. What it was like to be normal, _and _have Piper.

Orb tag, as Piper had coined it, was the most draining little "game," of life. By the time Piper was bandaged, and the boys were eating breakfast, he was ready for a nap. There were other things he hadn't considered about being mortal… other reassuring habits and securities he was going to have to adjust to living without. The sound of their heartbeats, for example. As he washed the dishes, he didn't have to be facing the table in order to picture Wyatt messily licking the syrup off of his fork, or to visualize Piper's encouraging smile as she spooned applesauce into Chris's mouth. What he couldn't do, however, was revel in the calm, familiar consistency of the three heartbeats that accompanied the most important people in his life. He could do no more than imagine the quick pumping of Wyatt's heart, fuelling the endless energy of his eldest son. The softer, yet equally rapid beat of the baby. Piper's own; slow and even, only her laughter causing the steady tempo to deviate ever so slightly.

And while it was somewhat comforting to know that he would never again have to feel Piper's angry emotions on top of his own when they were fighting, more than that, he already missed the way he used to actually feel the happiness behind her smile radiating within himself.

"How are you feeling?"

Piper slipped her arms underneath his and linked them around his waist, careful to keep her bandage from chafing against the front of his shirt.

He couldn't answer her right away, not for a lack of wanting to, but from his own current confusion over a decision that had seem so right, and so easy to make only yesterday.

She pressed a soft kiss between his shoulder blades and squeezed him reassuringly, "We'll figure it out. After all, you said so yourself, this is what you wanted."

He dried his hands on the dishtowel and turned around in her embrace, "I guess I'm just now realizing that there are a lot of things I should have considered before throwing myself off a bridge."

"And what other choice did you have?" Piper asked incredulously, unable to keep the hint of bitterness out of her tone. Not towards him, but towards the Elders that had come so close to permanently separating them. "Were you going to stay Up There with Them? Forever? I do not think so. No way. I have done more than my fair share of dragging your ass back here. You came back this time without any sacrifice of dignity required on my part; I liked it. It was a nice change for me."

Her frank tone, and that straight face she always somehow managed to hold together, was, as usual, his undoing. She smiled in satisfaction as he began to laugh.

"You want to talk about sacrificed dignity?" he retorted, "I seem to remember a certain witch rejecting me. Multiple times. For the next door neighbour. And I was so desperate to be around her, I babysat her club while she painted the town red with him."

"Hmm." She looked pensively toward the ceiling, "See, I don't remember that."

"Oh, you don't?" He chuckled.

"Nope. But I'd be willing to sacrifice my dignity one last time, begging you to do something." She smiled, locking her arms around his neck for leverage, and standing on her tip toes so that she was only millimetres away from his face.

"What's that?"

"Come with us to the park." She whispered, "I'm going to show you how perfect 'normal' can be."

And that was how they ended up here. He had argued – and lost – against Piper over which of the two of them was going to accompany Chris on the endless runs down the slide. It hadn't mattered to Piper that she was considerably lighter, not to mention more than half a foot shorter, than him; she had decided that he was going to get the full playground experience today, and apparently that meant weaving in and out of spaces built for individuals the height of his knees, with his not-quite-one year old son. It was cold, and damp, and sandy, and he had banged his shins more times than he could count, not to mention the bar located above the slide (what were those even there for, anyway?) that he had clipped his forehead on. Twice.

Just as Piper had promised, it was absolutely perfect.

And he was free to enjoy every moment of it. He could watch Piper, her hair blowing wildly in the wind as she laughed and cautioned Wyatt to hold on tightly. He could watch Wyatt, gripping the sides of the swing as if his life depended on it… as if he knew it would only take one fall for Piper to declare them too dangerous until he was older. He could zip down the gravel covered slide with his little boy held firmly on his lap, and watch the way Chris's eyes lit up, chubby baby hands clapping together in delight, each and every time they went down.

It was by no means the first time he had ever gone to a park with the boys, but it was the first time he didn't have to think of anything outside of the two of them. The greater good was no longer part of his concern. And for perhaps the first time, he could truly understand Piper's longing for a normal life. This is the world she had been a part of before becoming a witch. This was the life he must have had once… but it was nothing more than a dim memory for him, or it had been, until now. Piper woke every morning, remembering this, touching this, unable to quite keep it in her grasp.

Then it all went swiftly to hell. One moment, he was bickering with Piper, demanding that she take her turn on the playground, the next, he was looking toward the deserted sandbox, where Wyatt had been digging not ten seconds earlier.

"Where's Wyatt?" He asked, his voice clouded with worry.

Piper frowned and looked at the sandbox, then scanned the other pieces of equipment that generally attracted her precocious two and a half year old.

"I really wish he wouldn't do this." She muttered, "It makes me nervous."

When another quick scan of the immediate area produced no results, Leo's heart began to race.

"I don't see him anywhere."

It took Piper so long to answer him, he was about to repeat himself, but she finally turned around, the distracted frown still fixed on her face, "Don't freak out yet, you know how much he likes hiding. I just hate that I can never be sure if he's wandered away on his own two feet, or if he's orbed."

With that, she absently jiggled Chris on her hip and walked toward the tunnels, calling Wyatt's name as she went.

Leo took one last glance around him, and when his son didn't reappear, he took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and concentrated; clearing his head of all thoughts outside of his son.

For the first time ever, nothing happened. Because he was already not quite thinking clearly, Leo was unable to process anything besides the fact that he had always been able to sense his son, and now he couldn't. His mind immediately leapt to the conclusion that Wyatt was in serious trouble.

"I can't sense him."

Piper whirled around to face her husband, panic filling her expression for less than a second before acute annoyance took its place, "Of course you can't sense him." She snapped, "For God's sakes Leo, you don't have any powers. Don't ever scare me like that again."

"Right." He acknowledged sheepishly, "I'm sorry… it's been second nature for so long-

"Honey, let's just find our son first. I can only handle one crisis at a time."

"Right. Sorry." He repeated.

Shortly after that, Piper lost all semblance of patience, "Wyatt Matthew-

What the extent of her threat would have been, Leo was never to know. Wyatt apparently took Piper's tone so seriously, he believed it was in his best interest to make his way back to his parents as quickly as possible. Unfortunately for Piper and Leo, as quickly as possible, for Wyatt, involved orbing. If their 'perfect' outing hadn't been shot before, it certainly was now. Before the familiar lights even had a chance to coalesce into a form recognizable as their eldest son, Piper had promptly frozen everyone in the park. As she scolded him, Leo realized that this was a disheartening preview of the way the rest of their lives would be; they would no longer be an equal team. She was going to be on her own in cleaning whatever magical messes the boys created, and he was going to sit uselessly on the sidelines. He was going to have to almost literally start over, and find an entirely new role for himself within the Halliwell family dynamic.

In the beginning, answering the supernatural questions of the Charmed Ones hadn't been a difficult task; and as the years passed and their powers grew, he had been forced to confer more and more frequently with the Elders to find solutions to problems and questions he couldn't solve himself. Now, the only thing he had over them was time, and at the rate the sisters learned and developed, it was only a matter of years before he wouldn't even be of encyclopaedic use to them.

Hours passed at the park, these thoughts at the forefront of Leo's mind, before Wyatt finally had his fill of the playground, and they began the short walk home. Usually, he and Piper were both content to walk at Wyatt's pace for as long as their son wanted to walk, but Leo found himself growing uncharacteristically impatient with Wyatt's half asleep, agonizingly slow shuffle, and he deftly lifted the child into his arms, ignoring the curious stare this earned him from Piper. When he felt Wyatt's head settle against his neck, Leo allowed himself a sad smile; Wyatt couldn't keep himself awake five minutes while being transported from place to place; be it in a car, stroller, wagon, or just the arms of a loved one. At least he could still be involved in this aspect of his son's life. Right now, it ranked number one on a swiftly diminishing list.

"Hey! Speedy!"

He turned around, surprised to see Piper trailing several feet behind him. He stopped and shifted Wyatt's dead weight to his other arm while he waited for her to catch up.

"Where's the fire?" she asked, slightly winded.

"Sorry." He apologized with a weak smile, "Sometimes I forget how small you are."

When she found herself falling behind for the second time, Piper abruptly stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, locking the breaks on the stroller so that her hands were free to rest on her hips.

"I am too short for this crap. Either slow down and tell me what's bothering you, or walk home without me."

Leo ran an agitated hand through his hair before backtracking to where his wife had stubbornly parked Chris's stroller.

"I've just been thinking a lot… about what a change this is."

She unlocked the wheels and began slowly pushing Chris forward; Leo easily fell into step beside her.

"Do you wish you hadn't?" She asked softly, "If you had known it was going to be this hard, would that have changed your mind?"

"No." he answered with certainty.

He watched the flash of relief cross Piper's face before she quickly covered it; her tone had been carefully nonchalant, but the hint of insecurity hadn't slipped past him. His answer had been instinctive, immediate, and he was glad, despite the way he was feeling, that he was telling the truth when he said he couldn't have asked for things to turn out any differently. There had only been two options, and only one of them had included Piper. It was the choice he had to make, and would make again. Half the life he had shared with Piper was better than no life with her at all.

"There are just so many things that didn't even occur to me at the time I made the decision. I can't heal you ever again. Or the boys. Or your sisters. And it's not just the demons… I'm less concerned with you holding your own against them, than I am with the everyday things; how screwed up is that?"

Piper, recognizing this as a rhetorical question if there ever was one, said nothing.

"There are thousands of things that can go wrong at any given moment; car accidents, concussions, asthma, flesh eating disease…"

She tried to stifle a laugh, and slipped a comforting hand inside the back pocket of his jeans, "Sweetie, you're going to drive yourself crazy if you obsess over every day's dangerous possibilities. Like you said, there are thousands of ways things can go wrong… there's no possible way to prepare for all of them… not even half of them. Believe me; I have a husband who has spent the last six and a half years training me to accept that it's pointless to try."

Leo ignored her quip and continued on with his rant, "This morning, you were fine, but what if you hadn't been fine? What if Wyatt hadn't been fine? What if at the park someone… what if someone had taken him?" he tightened his grip on his son, as if he were expecting someone to leap out of the bushes and snatch him then and there.

What he certainly wasn't expecting, however, was the muffled giggle from the woman beside him. The mother of their children; the one person who should be every bit as concerned as he was.

"How is this funny to you?" He demanded.

"It's not." She responded quickly, and had the decency to look properly reproached, "I swear, it's not… it's just… flesh eating disease?"

"It has a thirty percent fatality rate, Piper." He snapped defensively, "And it has on more than one occasion developed as a complication from Chicken Pox, which neither of the boys have had yet!"

"Right." Piper agreed solemnly.

He glared at her innocent expression, "You're still laughing at me."

"I'm not." She deadpanned, "I'm just imagining the look on this hypothetical kidnapper's face when Wyatt simply orbs back to us."

Leo rolled his eyes, choosing once again to ignore her, instead of encouraging her rather unhelpful commentary. "I wasn't expecting this helplessness. It's not that I would have necessarily intervened if I had my powers and something happened; it's knowing that I can't. It's knowing that I no longer have the choice."

"Oh my God," she stated in amazement, eyes wide open. She clamped a hand over her mouth, but couldn't quite smother the laughter that came spilling out, "You are just as much of a control freak as I am!"

"That's ridiculous." Leo denied flatly.

"I cannot believe I've never noticed before. You always seem so laid back."

"I live with three women," he smirked, "three Charmed women. There isn't room for me to be controlling."

"Maybe not in the same way, but you're dependent on your powers. Even when things have been out of your control before… they've still to a certain point been within your control." she mused.

"Would you listen to yourself? I so do not need to be the one in control. I married _you_ for crying out loud. Control clearly can't be that important to me."

"You are _cranky_ when you get defensive."

"Piper," he sighed, "I would really appreciate a bit of support, instead of you making fun of me. This is really difficult."

His honest plea did what his indignant responses hadn't, and Piper promptly wiped the teasing smile from her face, "I'm sorry." she said contritely, "It will get easier; I promise it will. It's just another adjustment that you'll learn to live with. It may have been a long time ago, but you have to remember that you've already lived a full mortal life. And it wasn't such a bad one, was it?"

He merely shook his head, because it seemed too difficult to explain to her that it had been such a long time ago, sometimes the memories didn't even feel like his.

"You'll survive this. You'll cling to the good, and endure the bad, and survive. Then one day, you'll wake up in the morning and realize that you've found your center. There will be things you miss about the way your life used to be, but you won't trade what you've gained in its place for the world."

Leo cracked a smile at her Whitelighter-esque speech.

"Did your husband teach you that?" he asked, lightly bumping her hip.

"Meh," she shrugged. "He tried. I rebelled. Sometimes I'm not so good with the listening."

"You don't say."

As the manor came into view, Leo gently nudged Wyatt awake, knowing there would be hell to pay that night if they let the little boy fall asleep for any prolonged period of time so early in the day.

Instead of the whining protest he was more than half expecting, Wyatt tightened his hold around his father's neck and placed a sloppy kiss on his cheek.

"Love you, daddy." He murmured, his tiny voice thick with sleep.

And if being without powers allowed Leo just one additional moment like this, one moment that he wouldn't have been around to experience were he still a Whitelighter/Elder/Avatar, maybe, in the long run, being mortal was worth it.

* * *

_Well I guess it's obvious by this point, but I'm no longer strictly sticking solely to the Charmed Ones, haha. I started typing, and this just sort of poured out. I suck at life. Leo's one shot got a bit more epic than the other two. More epic than the other two combined, actually. Man, I need a muzzle. I know this chapter was a little different, but it's on account of the fact that there is not currently a single angsty bone in my entire body. I got an absolutely phenomenal grade on a paper I did (the same paper I was supposed to be working on when I wrote Beginning to Make it Better, actually, haha), plus it was like, 18 degrees outside today and I broke out my flipflops and took my laptop down to the river and just __**basked**__ in the sunlight as I wrote. Just __**try **__and write torment in a situation like that. Sorry if I disappointed anyone… lord knows I shouldn't go scaring off the few readers that I have, but chapter after chapter of endless angstiness - coupled with zero humour - starts to get a little repetitive after awhile, right? Especially by my hand, right? I was trying to spare you!..... no? Not buying it? Did I reach a little too far with that one? Ah well. I tried. Again, I feel that my honesty should keep you from riddling me with holes. Memo to self: Invest in Kevlar vest; just in case._


	4. Prue

_Hello again! I know; you were all hoping desperately that you could make it through another chapter without me opening my big mouth before letting you get started. No dice. If I have to put up with the disjointed thoughts in my mind, so do you. This is set post Déjà Vu All Over Again, and pre Witch Trials. My original plan was to do Prue in the hospital with the recently deceased Piper in All Hell Breaks Loose, only, two things sort of kind of happened: 1) I realized it's been done sixty four thousand times already and no one would care… well, the same goes for Déjà vu, soooo people probably __**still**__ won't care, but my heart wasn't really in it; 2) I could not, could __**not**__ get the Alice Hoffman quote out of my head, and I wanted to use it for her sooo badly… only, it wouldn't have really worked with my plan A. Believe me, I tried (__**very**__ unsuccessfully) to mash the two ideas together, even though I pretty much knew from the start that it was going to be in vain. Kind of an idiot that way. Ah well. Enjoy!_

* * *

**Control: Déjà vu All Over Again**

**He wouldn't understand, and that may be the reason she's in love with him. He couldn't imagine some of the things she's done. And when she's with him, neither can she.**

**Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman**

"_I'm going to really miss Andy."_

"_It's going to be very sad without him."_

"_Something tells me that he'll always be with us. We better get ready for work."_

Prue Halliwell is familiar with both grief and loss; she has learned, from an extraordinarily young age, how to smile and take charge on the outside, while she falls to pieces within.

The loss of her mother, father, grandmother; Prue has played comforter to Piper and Phoebe for all of these, and she buries her own grief, in a way only she knows how, and continues on with life.

Andy's funeral had been two weeks ago. She went to the service, she stood with composure, and at the end of it all, she offered the appropriate condolences; the appropriate gestures and contacts. Even though she hates, _hates_ being touchy feely with anyone. Aside from her sisters. Sometimes.

Once she and her sisters had returned to the manor, she had discussed the details with them aesthetically; _the flowers and the service were beautiful._ And carefully manipulated the conversation to avoid questions she hadn't cared to deal with; _How are you holding up? Are you feeling Alright? It's okay to be upset._

She hates that last one. As if she doesn't realize she's justified in being upset over the death of the only best friend she's ever really had. As if she doesn't realize she's justified in being upset with herself for playing prideful games with a good man; a man who could have made her really happy if she had let him. She realizes she's justified in being upset. She just doesn't feel there's a problem with her disinclination to lose her mind in front of every virtual stranger who asks about her feelings. Even her sisters, whom she loves dearly, should know her better than to even bother trying. Because she doesn't want to talk. She just wants to bury it for as long as she can, then release it quickly – privately – when it can't be contained a moment longer, and then bury it again.

Today, she is sipping coffee in the conservatory, reading the newspaper while making intermittent conversation with Phoebe, when her emotions finally bubble to what she recognizes as her point of no return. She isn't surprised, nor does she panic. Because she recognizes the signs, and is adept at remaining in control until she reaches the one place she doesn't have to be. The one place she can let go and feel no disappointment in herself afterwards, because she can almost convince herself that it hasn't happened.

"Where are you scooting off to in such a hurry?" Phoebe enquires suspiciously.

"Oh, you know; peace rally, environmental activist cell meeting, PETA convention. Girl's gotta keep busy."

When Phoebe only tilts her head in open mouthed confusion, Prue finally cracks a smile, "To take a shower, you goof. Honestly, sometimes I don't really see how we could have had the same parents."

"Hey!" Phoebe responds indignantly.

Prue shakes her head and starts toward the staircase, "Put your dishes in the sink when you're done, missy."

"Will do, Captain."

Phoebe's cheeky reply is lost on Prue, who is already stripping her sweater from her body as she quickly climbs the stairs. The thin tank-top is next to go, and by the time she passes the linen closet, grabbing a fresh towel and continuing down the hall without breaking her stride, her bra is dangling half hazardously from her fingertips.

Piper, thankfully, is elsewhere; most likely doing research for that nightclub idea of hers. Prue still isn't one hundred percent certain that it's a solid plan, but she doesn't have time to think about that now. She chooses to be thankful; Phoebe is almost too easy to handle, but encountering Piper -while standing dazed and half naked in the hallway- would create a difficult situation. A situation she is by no means prepared to handle. Not now, not in the near future, not in the distant future, not ever.

She locks the bathroom door, despite the fact that it's located inside her bedroom, and no one has cause to come in. It is a truth, universally acknowledged by persons with siblings, that no matter how old you become, they will inevitably invade your space at the exact moment where you would rather stick your head in an oven than even hear their voices.

Once safe, alone in the bathroom, Prue takes her time; indulging the masochistic desire to see just how far she can flirt with her breaking point before it takes her. In these moments, the pain controls her; she does not control it. Accepting this is a necessary part of her ritual. She accepts that the emotional break is going to come, and she cannot stop it. She chooses to surrender gracefully instead of fighting a lost battle, because if she can't win, she can at least be dignified. Instead, she pushes against the elastic band of pain and guilt which constricts her tighter and tighter every time. She tests its limits, forcing it farther, knowing she can't win; knowing it is only going to eventually snap back and sting her, and pursuing the morbidly curious struggle regardless. She takes a stubborn pleasure in the unhurried pace at which she turns on the shower; first the hot water, then the cold, then the hot again. She takes the same forced pleasure in the practiced ritual of hanging her white towel evenly across the centre of the rack fixed to the wall, and revels in how long it takes her to rid herself of the remainder of her clothes, neatly folding them and placing the tidy bundle on the covered toilet seat.

The shaking begins as she pulls back the curtain and steps into the ceramic tub; despite the humid fog already beginning to fill the room; and still she moves slowly. The elastic stretches a little further. Her breathing becomes increasingly laboured as her throat begins to close, because her body recognizes the steps in this dance; and still she moves slowly. The elastic stretches further still. She finally steps into the hot spray, and her body tenses; her skin almost immediately turning bright red under the unyielding heat. When she thrusts her face into the stream, her hair growing tangled and damp against her neck, the elastic snaps; just as it always does. A solitary sob rises in her throat, and she stifles it quickly, because noise is not a part of the ritual. Because if she makes no sound, then there is no evidence of the loss of control.

She thinks of Andy, of his endless faith in people; regardless of the other-worldly dangers she introduced him to. And she knows, without a doubt, she will never love, or be loved, by anyone ever again, in the way that she loved and was loved by him. When Andy looked at her, she could almost touch the fearless, naïve teenager she used to be. He had uncomplicated things; with him, she could almost once again simply be no more than the cheerleader infatuated with the jock.

Unfortunately, this thought only adds to Prue's guilt, because years ago, the cheerleader had run away from the jock. The cheerleader had longed to be free and independent, and the jock had made her want to stay. So she had cut herself off from the jock, broken his heart without warning, and then repeated the cycle eleven years later.

She is, at heart, terribly selfish, and she had thought of her own needs without ever considering his. And still he had loved her. And it hadn't mattered how many times she hurt him, or how many times she lied, in the end, his career and her destiny had been irrelevant in his eyes; the jock was still in love with the cheerleader. The jock wouldn't accept that the cheerleader was no longer naïve. That the cheerleader had done terrible things. That the cheerleader harboured hatred toward so many human and inhuman beings, the bitter wall that she had intentionally erected, once upon a time, was now entirely out of her control; she couldn't connect with people even when she wanted to. And so when the jock had died three weeks ago, he had taken with him the last piece of the cheerleader.

The tears do not fall any differently upon her cheeks than the water; Prue can only tell they have stopped when her throat finally relaxes, and the mixture of air and water begins to flow easily in and out of her mouth. She rubs her eyes with the back of her hand, stilling the swollen itch that lingers, and as her fingers run over the smooth skin of her face, all she can feel is tap water. Her salty tears blend so well into the faucet generated droplets, even she cannot find any trace of the meltdown that has occurred behind this curtain. The shaking gradually recedes – her body recognizes this stage as well – and when there is nothing left to consume, the pain goes out like a flame that has already sucked all of the oxygen out of a room. It settles back into that place where her soul used to be, and waits patiently, content to give her the reigns until it is strong enough for the next attack.

And then Prue is Prue again. When she stops the shower and turns off the water, she is thinking about the appraisal she has scheduled for that afternoon. As she pulls back the curtain, she is thinking of the hydro and phone bills that need to be paid by the end of the week. When she wipes the steam from the mirror and gazes at her reflection, she is not checking for puffy eyes or other telltale signs of tears; she merely wants to see herself as she scrubs her face dry and applies moisturizer. Andy is now far from her thoughts, and it doesn't occur to her that the reflective surface could possibly reveal anything besides a portrait of perfect serenity; after all, she has had years of practice at this. It's practically second nature.

Phoebe is rummaging through the hair products scattered across her dresser when she unlocks the bathroom door and steps into her bedroom.

"Holy longest-shower-ever." Phoebe says without looking up, "Way to use up all the hot water Prue."

Prue narrows her eyes and folds her arms across her towel clad body, "Wasn't that door locked?"

"Maybe just a little." Comes Phoebe's undaunted reply, "I used a pen. Where's your straightener?"

"Hidden from you. Why can't you use Piper's?"

This stops Phoebe in her tracks, and the youngest Halliwell grins guiltily at her older sister while fidgeting with one of the many bracelets adorning her wrist, "Yeah. About Piper's straightener… I may have had a tiny accident with it."

"And what kind of accident might that be?"

"…the kind where I accidentally let it rest on top of the plastic soap dish, then accidentally walk away and make a cup of tea, then accidentally come back to a burning melted mess that accidentally destroyed them both. Please don't tell Piper."

"Ugh. Phoebe." Prue sighs and rubs a hand over her face.

"I'll buy her a new one! And a new soap dish. Can I please please please please please just use yours?"

"No."

"Come on, Prue." she begs, and before Prue can stop her, Phoebe has thrown her arms around her sister's neck, violating her personal bubble in that manner which is so Phoebe, and quickly hugging the life out of her. "Just this once. I will be so careful."

"Oh for crying out loud. Top drawer. Take it. Take it and get the hell out of my room."

Phoebe hops backward and snatches the ceramic device out the dresser, paying no mind to the items she knocks off the top when she bangs the drawer shut.

"Thank you!" she calls cheerfully, skipping out of the room and slamming the door behind her.

Prue shakes her head, more than a little frustrated– as always – by Phoebe's irresponsibility. She picks the fallen items up from the floor and dumps them back on the dresser, marvelling at how quickly her sister can reduce perfect order into absolute chaos. A barely perceptible twinge pinches her as she fingers a perfume bottle; a gift from Andy that Christmas. She puts the bottle back in its proper place, and continues cleaning up after Hurricane Phoebe. Prue thinks of creative ways to kill her sister should anything happen to her flat iron, and somewhere deep within, the pain gathers back the first of its strength.

* * *

_**A/N:** I don't actually remember what sport, if any, Andy played in high school. I don't actually care enough to check, as it is 5:40 am for me, and I am finally getting tired. Yay! Plus, I'm wearing that kevlar vest I was talking about, so even if you do decide to shoot me over creative differences, I'm totally covered, haha._


	5. Piper

**Control: Oh My Goddess**

**Disneyland is the place to be when you're in love. Like love, it is unreal, a mirage in the morning sun, shimmering white like the coats of the attendants with their hippo-mouthed dustpans, sweeping away imaginary cigarette butts in the ice-cream morning.**

**Fiona the First, W.P. Kinsella**

"_You did it, Piper; you found your power… now control it."_

This is the advice he gives her, rather, the command he gives her, and she wants to be angry. She wants to snap back something witty and sarcastic and remind him of exactly whom it is he's speaking to. But she can't. Because he so rarely asserts that tone, she doesn't know how to fight it. Doesn't know how to do anything but tuck her tail between her legs and obey. And she hates him; because if he loved her at all, he would fight this instead of wasting time chastising her like a child.

But her sisters are calling her, and her loyalty to the members of her family in immediate danger shifts her focus. She compartmentalizes. She absently reflects that compartmentalization must be a talent that comes with being the oldest sister; Prue had been the ultimate master, and Piper has never been any good at wearing her heartbreak anywhere but on her sleeve, until it became her job to lead the family.

So the cold, unsympathetic tone of her husband is padlocked in a fireproof box, and she fades away in a whirlwind of smoke to the rescue of Phoebe and Paige.

* * *

She knows she shouldn't be here; she recognizes that she has selfishly abandoned her sisters, and her son, in order to self indulge in what is little more than a temper tantrum; the brunt of which is falling upon the entire city of San Francisco. But she could not, could not, stand in that room with _him_, and listen to _him_ congratulate her as if nothing were out of the ordinary. As if _he_ planned on coming back to her as soon as the powers were returned. She's tired; tired of her own emotions constantly having to take a backseat to something deemed more pressing. She wants to go back to a time when taking ten minutes for herself didn't make her feel like the world's most terrible person. When ten minutes breathing time didn't send the planet hurdling into chaos.

Now the Titans are gone, and so is her husband, and damn it, she is going to get her ten minutes. The rest of the world could burn in hell until then for all she cared.

She feels as if she's going to implode at any second from the pressure building inside her head, and she sends another bout of lightning crashing into the city's centre; but watching the curls of electric smoke climbing into the clouds does not relieve the pressure in the way she had thought it would. She isn't practised in violently externalizing her grief and anger on people who don't deserve it… people she isn't related to, anyway. Maybe she's doing it wrong. All she knows is that for ten minutes, everyone else needs to suffer in the way that she is suffering. She wants them to be the ones that pause for _her_, for once. She wants them to feel the way she feels. She wants to be absolved of guilt, because if the world knows how badly she hurts, they can't fault her for wanting ten fucking minutes for herself.

Only it isn't working, because obliterating the city is not making her feel any better. If anything, the ache inside her is expanding, indifferent to her attempts to project it unto the world that is disintegrating around her.

She screams loudly until her throat is raw; safe in the knowledge that no one can hear her. No one aside from _him_ that is, and _he_ isn't coming. She screams at Them, at God, at Prue, her mother, her father, her grandmother… at _him_. She screams at everyone who has "loved" her and abandoned her… at all the powers that be which have screwed her over, time and time again. She will never forgive them. She will never forgive any of them.

With this resolve in mind, she raises her arms again, holding on to the anguish inside of her for as long as she can stand it, and then hurling it forward in a stormy torrent of wind and electricity. When she finally hears the sirens – during a brief lapse in the deafening thunder – overlapping one another as they rush to the accidents on the highway, she feels a tiny thrill of satisfaction shoot up her spine. Maybe she isn't doing this wrong after all. Maybe there is hope for her yet. Reeking havoc is finally, finally easing the pain, and she has six glorious minutes left.

"Piper."

The voice washes over her, and the compassionate tone makes her want to cry. How many times has he whispered her name that way? Even she can't count. That voice used to be able to fix almost anything, and now it is bent on destroying her. She whirls around to face _him_ and throws her hands in front of her, watching him vanish in an explosion of white and blue lights. If he knows what is good for him, he will not reappear. She will kill him before she lets him break any more of what remains of her heart.

The familiar shower of orbs warns her that he has no intention of leaving, and she raises her hands, preparing to repeat the action as many times as is necessary for him to take the hint.

He materializes closer to her than she expects, and the smell of his hair and his skin causes her to hesitate a moment; she is thrown off balance, as always, by his near proximity. Piper quickly gathers her wits and throws a hand forward, but her deadly aim is – for once – off kilter, due to the angry red film obscuring her vision. The blow glances off Leo's shoulder, and he grits his teeth against the pain.

The smallest of vindictive smirks flashes across her face as she brings her arm back to try again, but Leo grabs her wrist mid-air, tightly, almost painfully, and forces her arms down to her sides.

"Stop it." He hisses.

"You don't get to tell me what to do anymore." She snaps back.

"When did I ever?"

His rueful reply cuts her like a knife; it is so typical of them, so every day, that she can almost convince herself that this is merely another one of their stupid arguments. That he's going to pull her body against his, and whisper softly in her ear until she forgets why she's so angry with him in the first place. She wants to throw herself at him; to wrap her legs around his waist, bury her face in his neck, and beg him not to leave, because she doesn't know how she can be expected to go on, to lead her sisters and mother their child, without this.

And she only has three minutes left.

"Go away." She says flatly.

Leo shakes his head, "I can't. Piper, you're playing a very dangerous game right now… the longer you hold on to these powers-

"I know how this works, Leo!" she shouts, "When did I stop being a person to you? I'm not some newbie witch; I am your _wife_ goddamn it. Don't treat me like I'm five."

"Well then you need to stop acting like you are." He retorts calmly.

She knows he is reacting based on his own hurt. She knows her anger with him is sparking his with her, because she is blaming him, and he doesn't see this as his fault. She also knows he is wrong. Because all he has to do is _not_ disappear Up There, and that would be the end of it. He wants this. He wants this more than he wants her. And that is the bottom line.

"Maybe I was wrong, Leo." Piper states coolly, "Maybe your destiny really does lie with the Elders. I mean, you pretty much have the pompous, condescending prick part down pat… how much more can there really be to learn?"

She ignores the wounded expression on his face; it's his own fault for patronizing her. If he thinks he can still just show up and try to play the rational comforter, he's got another thing coming.

Two minutes. Two minutes is all she has left, and _he_ is ruining them.

"You'll get your precious power back." She spits, "But you are going to get them on my time; not yours. Go report _that_ to your bosses – sorry, _coworkers_ – and leave me the fuck alone."

"Piper-

She cuts him off, "Unless the next words out of your mouth are going to be some combination of, 'I'm sorry,' 'I made a mistake," and, 'Let's go home,' then you need to leave. Now."

When he hesitates, she remorselessly blows him to pieces, again. She hopes it hurt him as much as he has hurt her.

This time, Leo doesn't re-emerge, and she is left with one final minute to herself, although she thinks she should be entitled to more, seeing as how _he_ monopolized five of them. But she has a son. A son who is, as of this morning, her sole responsibility. And despite the power coursing through her, calling to her, the love she holds for Wyatt is stronger.

_See how easy that is?_ She thinks defiantly, with her husband in mind. _Do you see how simple it is to deny something that calls to you, when there are people in your life who are more important?_

She is too angry to admit aloud that Leo _does_ see. He must; and that is where the real betrayal lies. He is choosing his calling anyway, because the life they have made together can't possibly measure up to omniscient power. A promotion. Her husband is abandoning her for a fucking promotion.

She hasn't considered herself an over the top romantic in years, not since long before Prue died. She had thought she understood the difference between stable, real world love, and cinematic fantasy, but now she realizes she is just as naïve as she had been five years ago, before… before _him_. The two perceptions of love might as well be one and the same, because if what she has shared with Leo isn't genuine love, then love can't exist. She has loved him with everything she has, given herself to him completely in a way that is so hard for her, and now he is gone. It has ended in shambles. True love is dead, along with chivalry, commitment, family loyalty, and _him_. She will never be whole again.

Forty two seconds remain, and she sends a new burst of white hot electricity toward the place she calls home. _Home._ The term is almost laughable now. She hears a presence orbing in behind her, but she ignores it, because she can always feel when _he_ is around her, and as long as it isn't _him,_ she doesn't care.

"Piper!"

All she wants is ten minutes. That's it. And then she will come back and carry out her life as if nothing has changed, even though everything has. Why can't they all just leave her the hell alone for ten minutes?

"Stay away from me."

"We're taking you home… to your family."

The sentence is started by Paige, and ended by Phoebe, and the synchronization both distracts, and annoys, Piper.

"What family?" She can't help asking resentfully. Do they not realize that she has just lost a half of herself? If that doesn't warrant ten minutes alone, she doesn't know what does.

"To your son. Wyatt; remember him? He needs his mother. He's already lost his father, don't take his mother away from him too."

They're completing each other's sentences again. The effort it takes to keep her face impassive is draining, and she's torn between rampant irritation, and the feeling that she is once again being betrayed. Because her sisters think she's come completely undone, and they've adopted that same condescending tone, that same cautious, even tone, reserved solely for the emotionally unstable, that _he_ used on her just minutes ago. Phoebe and Paige know how much she loves her son. She would never, _never_ leave him. And the fact that they doubt this is more than she can handle right now.

Her ten minutes are up, and she feels no better than she did when she left the manor; so much for destructive therapy. The mention of Wyatt, and her sisters' belief that she could even entertain the notion of abandoning him, causes her hurt to overpower her rage. She can't live like this. She won't. As angry as _he_ makes her, as much as _he_ has hurt her, she can't be without him; even if _he_ is determined to pretend he is just fine without her. Without another word to her sisters, she turns her back and disappears.

* * *

_Sorry for the ridiculously lengthy delay… cruelty, thy name is exams. I took a bit of creative licence; both with Leo, and Piper. I let Piper's witch powers work alongside the Goddess ones… I don't know if they would have or not… probably not, since Paige and Phoebe didn't have any luck scrying for her… meh. I don't particularly care… school has pushed me past the point of caring about anything. As for Leo, he took a little detour after he orbed out of the manor. I'm trying to de-stress a little, so here I am! I tried to save Piper for pretty much last, because she's my favourite, and I didn't trust myself to find the motivation to write everyone else after I finished her, haha. I'm pretty much as attention deficit as they come. I have a chapter for Cole currently half finished, but I feel as if I've pretty much beaten this story to death already, soo I'm going to just do one post-series finale chapter after this, and call it a day. I haven't started writing it yet, but I have a tentative idea. It's just going to be a little entertainment bit, set five years or so after Forever Charmed, to tie things up on a positive note. Feel free to let me know what you think!_


	6. Cole

**Control: Centennial Charmed**

**It is not that love sometimes makes mistakes, but that it is essentially, a mistake. We fall in love when our imagination projects nonexistent perfections on to another person. One day the phantasmagoria vanishes, and with it love dies.**

**On Love, Ortega y Gasset**

Anger. The same burning, unstoppable rage that he fights to control night and day. Correction; that he _used_ to fight to control. Before he lost Phoebe. Before his best stopped being good enough, and he realized that even if he spent eternity on earth atoning for his wrongdoings, her bitch sisters would make sure she stayed away from him forever. As if the whole, "Source of all Evil" business had been entirely his fault. As if the whole disaster hadn't spiralled from his attempts to save them all.

And this was the way they repaid him. He had given her everything. Had done anything that she ever asked of him. They had been _happy_. And now, even in the new universe, which should hold everything he wants, mainly Phoebe, he still can't have her. What kind of fucked up world married them, and yet kept them further apart than they had ever been in the original reality? She hated him. She actually despised him; he had never seen her eyes so cold.

Piper and… Paige – he grits his teeth and struggles to see past the red film that clouds his vision, just from the mere thought of the half breed's name – had accepted Phoebe back without question, and, him being dead and all, they had been perfectly happy to absolve Phoebe of her part in the drama, happy to forget she had joined him of her own free will. And that had been fine. But he had come back… to her. Free of the evil that had tainted his half of a soul. Or, as free of evil as he had been when they had first fallen for each other; even after she knew who he really was. Whatever. And it hadn't been good enough. Phoebe and her sisters had apparently forgotten the rules that dictated that powers in themselves couldn't be evil. There is always a choice involved. He had chosen to bury his soul, and then he had chosen to bury his darkness, for her. And now, all of a sudden, conveniently, the demonic powers he had picked up – for her – so that he could make his way back to the earthly plane – for her – were enough to condemn him. How the fuck was this fair?

Looking back, yes, it's possible he went, what could possibly be interpreted as, slightly postal. But he couldn't be without Phoebe. He didn't want to live in a world without Phoebe, and countless attempts at removing himself from that world – all ending in failure – had rendered him absolutely destroyed. And with no other option, no one, _no one_, could blame him for creating a better world. One where he could be happy with Phoebe, and everyone else could get past Prue and just live their lives. Paige had been a small price to pay. She was a half sister… Phoebe and Piper had known her a year. And if nothing else, she annoyed him. Something about her grated powerfully against every fibre of his being in a way no one ever had; not even Prue. He had taken a certain amount of pleasure in riling up the eldest Halliwell, mainly because it had been quite hilarious to witness how easily he could piss her off. Paige… Paige irritated him.

Only now, he suspects Paige is destroying him again. Somehow, She's here, stirring trouble in that holier-than-thou, elitist manner she has, and he can't even concentrate on finding out for sure and killing her properly because his _wife_, doesn't see a problem with infidelity, and he, apparently, does not either according to her; and he cannot conceive of a world where anyone can take her place. He thinks of the intruder witch, of Leo saving her, and he knows that it could not have been Piper; Darryl most certainly would have recognized her. He wants to believe that all of this is connected to Paige, that it must be her fault. When she – annoyingly – somehow managed to make the jump with him, she threw off some sort of balance. She, again, ruined things for Phoebe and himself. Pretentious bitch.

But, as has been established so many times over, if nothing else, Cole is smart. And while he is angry, while he is on the verge of snapping and killing everyone within his line of vision, while he is reminding himself to keep control for Phoebe's sake, he knows it isn't logical to hold Paige responsible for the way things have ended here. If nothing else, it gives her pain-in-the-ass personality far too much credit.

Regardless of fault or blame, a line was crossed during his time spent as the source. And there is no coming back from it. Perhaps he should have killed the Seer instead of Paige, and avoided that particular drama all together, trusting the sisters to defeat The Source without his explicit intervention. At the same time however, Phoebe had been willing to give him a chance after the fact that he was trying to kill her came to light the first time around; in the grand scheme of things, expecting her to take him back had not been that much of a reach.

He thinks of Phoebe, of the way she had been two and a half years ago. Of her easy, bright smile, sunny disposition. Of a girl who didn't let the dangers she faced mar her love for life, and faith in love. Human love, demonic love, love was just love to her. And he thinks of the way she is now; jaded. Cautious. Still the same Phoebe, but less impulsive. Prone to putting actual thought into her actions instead of diving in head first. And he wonders if maybe at the end of it all, he is the one responsible for this change. If maybe he has unintentionally broken her heart, violated her trust, one too many times. If maybe she'll never be quite as free again, and it's his fault.

He has to get to Phoebe before Paige does; it's his only chance of saving this reality, of bringing himself and Phoebe back together. As much as it pains him to admit it, he has underestimated Paige in the past; although a verdict hasn't been reached as to whether her successes can be attributed to actual skill, or just an infuriating amount of good luck. Regardless, he can't afford to underestimate her here; he recognizes that this is most likely the last chance he will ever get to right his universe to the way it should be.

So as Phoebe walks away from him, as she leaves the joke that is their bedroom, he forcibly reigns in his jealousy, reigns in that awful temper of his that has made bad situations become worse on so many different occasions, and goes after her to make amends. He is determined to fix this; determined to keep Phoebe; but more than anything, he is determined not to lose the battle to _Paige_ of all people.

* * *

"_Maybe it just wasn't meant to be."_

This is, surprisingly, the thought that runs briefly, almost absently, through Cole's mind as he endures Piper and Paige's embarrassing ambush. Physically seeing Paige, in this world that is supposed to be his own, pushes him past the thin line keeping him from complete and total insanity; nothing is the way it should be here, everything has escaped his control. He thinks of Phoebe's words from not five minutes ago, and the rage returns, burning hot and bright inside his body, fuelling the attack that he fantasizes will end them all. No one, _no one_ tells him what is, or is not meant to be. This is his world, and he will be the one to decide. Again, just like it had moments ago in the bedroom, Cole's temper explodes; he is going to end this. He is going to do what he should have done years ago, and just do away with all of them. No more tolerance, no more drama; Belthazor never had to deal with the problems that Cole masochistically heaped upon himself.

When Phoebe grabs his arm, stopping the energy ball he had been forming and enabling her sisters' escape, the rage remains, and his hand flies on its own accord, committing an act he would have never thought himself capable of against the woman he has loved for so long.

But Belthazor is past regret. He is past remorse, grief, pain, past all the emotions that weak, human Cole endured for the sake of love. He has had enough; this is no longer about love, this is about war. This is about showing the witches the consequences to crossing someone of his capabilities. They have forgotten who he once was, and by the day's end, they will remember. He will leave his mark on them, regardless of whether they ultimately defeat him in the end. He will take at least one Halliwell with him before that vanquishing potion does its' duty. If they aren't _meant to be_ in life, then they are most certainly going to _be _in death.

He turns to Phoebe, who is sprawled out on the floor, too shocked to even make one of the cold, sarcastic quips he has come to associate with the Phoebe of this world.

"I didn't go through all this to lose you Phoebe; if I'm going down, you're going down with me."

* * *

_I guess I lied when I said I was scrapping Cole, lol. It was more or less finished already, so I figured I might as well throw it in here. The next one really is the end though. Promise._


	7. Epilogue: PennyPatty

I uploaded both chapters at once.... what can I say? I wanted it done with, lol. This chapter is (obviously) taking place long after the finale. I'm sure you would have figured that out, especially given the title, but I thought I'd throw it out there anyway. Oh, also, I changed "Henry Jr."'s name. I kept up with the traditional names for Phoebe's children, because I respect that family names meant a lot to the girls, but I really, really, REALLY don't like jr's. It's fine for people who choose that, I guess, but personally, I couldn't make myself write it.

* * *

**Control: Post-Forever Charmed**

The manor, which once upon a time, had seemed a rather expansive space, far larger than was required for three women, now oftentimes feels as spacious as a broom closet. The old house stands beautiful and proud, well loved and cared for under the tender, compulsive hands of Piper Halliwell; however the walls preserve evidence of occasions where even Piper has lost the battle against disorder; occasions when her intervention has come moments too late. They hold evidence of adventures past; mischief at the hands of her sons, daughter, nieces and nephew, which have proved impossible to erase.

The most recent scars manifest themselves in the form of scorch marks; tiny black dots that freckle the immaculate kitchen counter, in the corner near the toaster. They mar Piper's perfect kitchen, but these blemishes have taught two Halliwells and a Mitchell, some valuable lessons.

Lesson number one, as learned by Phoebe's youngest daughter, Grace; a toaster-oven is a less than adequate substitute for a Barbie tanning bed.

Lesson number two, as learned by Melinda and Connor; it is never, under any circumstance, acceptable to encourage the abuse of kitchen appliances – at the expense of a younger cousin – for the sake of one's own amusement.

Penny and Patty have found themselves, for the first time ever, responsible for the care of six children – all under the age of ten – while Piper, Phoebe and Paige rage a pre-emptive war against any demon who could possibly threaten the Wiccanning scheduled for the upcoming night. While time has proven thus far that Phoebe and Paige have better luck with Wiccannings than Piper, no one is willing to take any chances with Paige's six week old girls.

Leo and Coop accompanied the girls to Paige and Henry's in order fulfill the role of babysitter, given Paige's reluctance to separate from the newborns, and the collective hesitance of the adults to summon hordes of demons to the manor; where their children all have the tendency to orb into a room at distracting and dangerous times. Penny and Patty, summoned early that morning, are maintaining order in the house, all the while, secretly, wondering when watching a few kids turned into such an impossible task. Henry, it seems, has managed to come out on top, safe from all things both demonic and parental until he finishes work at six o'clock.

The smoldering remains of Beach Barbie lie in the kitchen sink, quickly cooling as Penny holds young Grace in one arm, and waves a dishtowel beneath the smoke detector with her other. Surprisingly enough, Melinda and her cousin Connor, absolutely inseparable and born only weeks apart, have had a hand in most of the permanent damages the manor has sustained… the parts that can't be blamed on demonic attacks, anyway. The less than subtle pranks of Wyatt and Chris tend to send whoever happens to be watching them running before any real damage can be done; it's easier to put an end to mischief when it almost always begins – and ends – with a magical explosion of sorts. Connor and Melinda, by comparison, prefer the silent and deadly approach; the mortal approach. Something neither Paige nor Piper find particularly amusing. They are content to draw on walls, mix around potion bottles, tamper with protection crystals, and apparently, now, convince their youngest cousin (not counting the twins, who are too young to be of any interest to them) to stick plastic in the oven in order to watch it burn. Perfectly well-mannered on their own, the one million and one little ways they find to reduce the manor to shambles any day they are together has become more taxing than anything Wyatt or Chris could dream up.

"I think we should call the girls." Patty said, vehemently scrubbing the counter, all the while knowing nothing short of a divine act was going to remove the flecks of blackened plastic that had melted into the marble.

"Oh don't be silly, Patty." Penny responded dismissively, her voice rising to be heard above the sobs of the little girl in her arms. "There are only six of them; that's three apiece. Lord knows, we both had enough experience when we were alive, what with Victor-

She stopped herself mid sentence, catching from the corner of her eye her great-granddaughter casually inching her way out of the kitchen.

"Prudence Melinda!"

The four year old flinched, and obediently made a 180 degree turn. "Yes Grams?"

Penny stared pointedly in the direction of the kitchen table, "Park it, missy."

Melinda released a theatrical sigh, and dejectedly slumped into the chair next to her partner in crime.

"You know better than to put toys in the toaster, don't you my darlings?" Patty questioned gently.

"Of course they do." Penny interrupted, "My goodness Patty, don't coddle them. They knew exactly what they were doing; you two should be ashamed of yourselves."

"Mother." Patty warned tiredly, sensing even her boundless patience reaching a breaking point. Without waiting for a response, she turned her attention back to the children in front of her. Melinda sat rigidly in her seat, staring at the tabletop with fixed determination, while Connor squirmed uneasily against the wood.

Accurately pinpointing Connor as the weaker of the two, Patty focused her attentions on him. Neither of them could lie to save their lives, but Melinda had an exceptional talent for avoiding the truth. The girl could talk her way out of anything.

"Connor?" She prompted.

Melinda shot him a warning glance, and Connor blushed furiously. The panicked expression in his large brown eyes would have been comical, if Patty wasn't so preoccupied anticipating Piper's reaction to the burned countertops she had _just_ had replaced.

"Putting things in the toaster that don't belong in the toaster makes fire." Melinda recited solemnly, clasping Connor's hand in hers and saving him from speaking, "And fire makes a mess. And mommy really, really really doesn't like messes."

Patty couldn't help but roll her eyes. "Right, but fire is also very dangerous-

"We _know_ Grandma. But we didn't do it. Grace is the one that did it. One time when I was little, I put Chris's army man in the toaster, 'cause I wanted to pretend he was in the desert, and then Chris hit me."

Patty frowned, "Melinda, I'm not exactly sure what that-

"And then daddy put us in time out, except Chris had to be in time out longer because you're not supposed to hit people when they're littler than you."

A tiny smile tugged at Patty's lips, and she folded her arms across her chest, "I see what you're doing, Melinda Halliwell."

"And guess how old I was Grandma?"

"I don't know sweetheart, how old?"

"I was two. I was just a baby! And Grace is three, which is almost as big as me and Connor. So she should be in trouble, 'cause we didn't even do anything, and the only person that hit anybody was Grace, and she's the one that put her Barbie in there by herself and we didn't even hit her back. Not even once."

Grace's tears trickled to a halt almost instantly, and she tried desperately to free herself from Penny's grip, lunging at her cousins.

"You killed Wendy!"

"_You_ killed Wendy." Connor retorted.

Penny struggled to balance the dark haired beauty on her hip, as Grace continued screaming in Melinda and Connor's direction.

"I'm telling mommy and Auntie Paige and Auntie Piper! And I'm telling daddy, and I'm telling Uncle Leo, and I'm telling-

"They get the picture, Grace." Penny snapped impatiently, "Behave yourself."

Grace pouted, but dutifully refrained from saying another word. For all their flaws, obedience is something they – almost always – do well.

"Apologize to your cousin." Penny commanded.

Connor stubbornly shook his head, "It's her own fault. We didn't _make_ her do it."

Penny's eyes narrowed as she was once again forced to restrain the feisty three-year-old, "Connor Mitchell, you will apologize this second or so help me, I will put her down and let her give you what you have coming."

Connor glared at Grace, and then looked toward Melinda, who shrugged noncommittally.

"I'm sorry Grace."

Satisfied, Penny nodded.

"Melinda?"

"Yes Grams?"

"What do you say?"

"I'm sorry you stuck Wendy in the oven and melted her, Grace."

The sincere, liquid chocolate irises would have fooled anyone, except for the woman who had raised Phoebe Halliwell. Pretty brown eyes had no effect on Penny.

"Don't try my patience, Melinda."

"I'm not Grams! I said sorry!"

Melinda's protest was executed with close to perfect innocence, save for the mischievous twist to her mouth that was an unparalleled reflection of Leo.

Connor snickered, and before Penny could reply, a loud crash reverberated throughout the manor. The two adults traded identical looks of horror as Melinda and Connor grinned widely, confident that whatever the three eldest were doing, it was, in all probability, worse than setting off a smoke alarm and ruining a toy. Wyatt and Chris finding themselves in trouble was nothing new, but Melinda and Connor could not help but hope their cousin Laura found herself taken down with the boys; it would serve her right for excluding the two of them from the fun, and leaving them with her stupid sister in the first place.

"Wyatt?" Patty called tentatively, "Laura? Chris?"

"They're in the attic again." Connor sing-songed, recognizing a get-out-of-jail-free opportunity if ever there was one.

"They're not s'posed to be up there without mommy or daddy." Melinda added helpfully.

Mother and daughter headed quickly toward the stairs, strictly ordering the three children out of the kitchen as they went.

"Perhaps it would be best if we called the girls." Patty repeated.

* * *

_And that's all she wrote! I know it took me a ridiculously long time to finally finish this off… I got off work early today, then spent an hour in the library waiting for a friend to finish work, so I whipped out the good old notebook and slapped these two chapters together. It's not much, but it's been driving me crazy knowing I had an unfinished story on here. Now you see I wasn't kidding when I mentioned leaving Piper to the end in order to stay procrastination, lol. I don't know how I feel about this last one… sometimes I like it reading it over, sometimes I don't, but it seems realistic enough to me, considering faaaaaarrrrr worse happened on a weekly basis in MY house while I was growing up, haha. And such is life; sometimes losing control of a situation makes you want to curl up in a corner and cry, and sometimes it's just so ridiculous, you can't do anything more than shake your head and think, FML. Thanks to those of you who reviewed/favourited and whatnot… I always try and make personal replies… I figure that if you guys make the effort, I should too, but it doesn't hurt to say thanks twice. Every time my cell phone beeped, texting me a new review or alert e-mail, it always made me smile._


	8. Chris

Hi! I know this story has been listed as completed for over six months, but a couple months ago, **Meluivan's Muse** left a review pointing out her disappointment that I never wrote one for Chris. To be honest, at the time I was writing the story it had never even occurred to me to do so. Any of you following my story _Keep Rolling the Lonesome Road _are well aware that chapter 17 turned into a brick wall of sorts for me, and in the time that I took off to work on it, instead of _actually _working on it, this piece is one of about four that I wrote instead, haha. Anyway, here it is; do with it what you will. I'll leave the Chris chapter as the last one listed for now, in order to avoid causing confusion, but once it's been posted for a sufficient amount of time, I'll probably switch its placement with the Penny/Patty chapter, because that one _was _supposed to be last, and I already had my current story in mind when I wrote it. Thanks!

* * *

**Control: Spin City**

**One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head, too.**

**- Friedrich Nietsche**

He doesn't follow them intentionally. It's very important to note that part. He rushes out of the cave and he never wants to look at any of them again, but there's a part of him, a brainless, masochistic part of him, that needs to be there when they go to Magic School. That needs to be there when Piper and Leo have the inevitable conversation concerning him, and his actions, and his acute degree of _rage _that had been hidden from even him before he found himself alone with Leo. He feels compelled to be there to hear his mother and father's true thoughts on the events that have transpired that evening, because he _needs _to know what they might be willing to say to each other, that they would never be willing to say to him or anyone else. Especially now that he isn't quite sure what to think about himself.

The truth is, he's always had a knack for going unobserved in rooms… even growing up, before life had gone to hell in a handbasket, when contrary to what he was sure the sisters could ever imagine, he had been a talker. A _loud _talker. He had been restless, him and Wyatt both, and their parents had grown accustomed to always knowing where they were, because they had been seemingly unable to go anywhere, to do anything, quietly. Maybe that's why it had always been so easy for him to stand still in a corner, in a hallway, and have no one ever be the wiser; no one except his mom of course. There had been times she would catch his eye, and her look alone had been enough to let him know that she _knew. _That she wouldn't say anything about it, but she knew.

As he waits in the shadows created by the expansive pillars, as he watches his dad, watches _Leo _cram in a few more desperate moments with his son before he inevitably takes off back Up There as if nothing has changed, his mind drifts unexpectedly to one of the times she hadn't noticed.

_He sits in the laundry room atop the dryer, and he firmly reminds himself not to swing his legs. He has to sit still. The slightest whisper of sound will alert them both, and the discussion will end with two fake smiles, a hand on his cheek, and his father orbing away while his mother looks between her son and the space her husband so recently filled with torn brown eyes._

"_Leo you have to deal with this. I know how much you love him, I've never once doubted that; but he's beginning to, and you need to address the issue with him. You can't just "make it up to him the next time," because you can't be sure you won't be called away then, too. He's still a child; he doesn't understand."_

_The discussion is nothing new to him; they are both saying things he's heard them say so many times before, but with his father's next monosyllabic sentence, everything is different._

"_Fuck."_

_The curse is followed by the sound of a chair scraping roughly against the tiled floor, and aggression rings through both. He's startled, and then he doesn't need to concentrate so hard on not making a sound, because his body has frozen in shock; for a moment, he forgets to even breathe. He's never heard his dad swear like that… for all the other adults in his life, mainly his mother and aunts, it's a little more common, but hearing the word come from his father's mouth makes him feel as if he's listening in on something especially illicit._

_There's more shuffling in the kitchen, and he risks a quick peek through the doorway and glimpses dad with his elbows on the table and his head in his hands while mom sits beside him and gently runs her hand over his back. He's at a loss for words, and it seems that his dad is too._

"_Come to bed." She whispers._

"_I can't." _

_Chris hears frustration and anger, but what he sees is sadness. Hopelessness. Regret. And he's tempted to rush into the room and assure his dad that everything's okay, that he's not mad anymore, that while he's sitting here listening, he __**gets **__it, and Leo doesn't ever need to look that sad because of him. But he doesn't, because on some level he knows that he would be interrupting something very important, something that's bigger than all the other things he's listened in on that he wasn't supposed to hear. And in his mind, he hears the word, spoken in his dad's voice, repeated. Fuck. __**Fuck.**__ He's hardly ever seen Leo get upset about anything. He wouldn't even know where to begin._

"_Come to bed." _

_She says it for the second time in a tone that's still soft, but it's no longer quite as gentle. He knows this tone; it's the one she uses with him when he tries to argue and she's not upset yet, but he knows she will be soon if he doesn't just shut up and do what she's asked._

"_I don't deserve you. Or them. I don't-_

"_Stay the night. Tomorrow I'll make breakfast, and you'll talk to your son. Interruption free."_

"_Oh yeah?"_

_His dad's voice is amused now, there's no more of that foreign, angry aggravation he had heard moments ago, and he relaxes without realizing how tense he has become. He should have known his mom would fix it; there isn't anything she can't do._

"_Yeah. If I have to freeze Them, hell, if I have to freeze time itself__, I will find a way to do it. Don't think I won't. You're coming to bed, you're making passionate but quiet love to your wife keeping in mind your sons are down the hall, and you're going to worry about saving the world tomorrow after ten, and not a minute earlier."_

"_I wish things were different."_

_The anger hits him again and he wants to scream that things __**can **__be different, that all his father needs to do is to __**want **__it bad enough. Because his family is powerful and there isn't anything they can't do when they will themselves to do it. But he bottles the scream and tucks it in his pocket._

"_They will be. Soon. We'll figure it out. We always do."_

There's stillness between Piper and Leo now, a flagrant uncertainty that he had never witnessed, not once, with his mom and dad. And it unnerves him, because he could have never imagined it going this wrong. Growing up, if there had been one thing he had always known, it was that his parents loved each other. The child his father clings to now is the only thing that keeps them in each other's presence after the buffer that was Sigmund leaves the room. The only thing that allows them to share this space and brave this awkwardness for the sake of the son they had together in what might as well have been another life.

"You're suffocating the boy."

He watches Leo stammer his way through a lot of noises, few of them actually words.

"It's just… you know…"

"Overcompensating?"

There's a teasing twist to her mouth that he almost recognizes. It's remnant of the one favoured by his mother, but it's not quite the same. Not yet.

"No, I, I just… miss him a lot."

The words are murmured into the floor more than anything, and the ambivalent emotions surrounding the man that will become his father are clear to him, even though he wishes they weren't. And it hurts him because he knows that what makes him angriest about Leo, what fills him with the most hate, the most resentment, is the way he had never been able to hate him at all. The way his heart had jumped every time he came home and _paid attention._ And it was only ever after he had left again that he had remembered the anger, the _coldness_ he had been dead set on displaying the next time his dad came home. The _hurt _he had wanted to inflict on the father he saw sometimes and not others, and couldn't break away from. No, he had never been able to hate his father for long, no matter how hard he had tried. It's easier for him to hate the Leo of this time, and he embraces that hate with everything he has, because for once, he knows how to hold on to it. Because his dad had loved him. His dad had loved his mother. And he has witnessed _this _Leo be selfish and condescending and _mean _in a way his own never was.

Being Up There has changed this Leo in a way that it hadn't changed his own father, and he refuses to believe that it's in any way his fault. There are a lot of things he has fucked up while here, there are a lot of things that have gone off-path in ways he never expected, but the transition between the Leo who could hardly think of anything outside of Piper during the incident with the Titans, to the Leo who had made sporadic appearances to offer whimsical pieces of unhelpful advice before banging his mother and disappearing for six months, that is a result of Leo's own bad decision making. And he would not, he _would not_ be held accountable.

"You know, Leo, you _can _get through to him."

He snaps to attention as he remembers why he's here, and he berates himself for getting so distracted. He had… hit... his father. No, not his father. _Leo_. He had hit Leo, and he can't make the guilt go away, the shame go away, because while he was hitting him, he had been thinking about his real father. And then there had been no more denying that he lies to himself when he says he never hated his dad, that he had simply been indifferent to him. Because after his mother had died, then Wyatt had lost his mind, and he had _needed _his father more than anything in the world, and his dad hadn't been able to do a damn thing. He had lost his mother and lost his brother and then lost the father he never really permanently had at the same time, because his dad, _Leo_, hadn't been able to handle the prospect of an eternity without Piper. He had become distracted, absent, incapable of even the slightest amount of focus or helpfulness, and it hadn't been in the least bit fair because _he _had been the child and wallowing hadn't been an option for him. And when Piper had looked at him and pulled on his arm he had seen _his _mom, felt _her _incredulity that the boy she raised could even think to behave in such a way. He had seen his reflection in her dark eyes and not recognized the person that he has become.

He had been forced to realize that for all his tenacity, all his plans and ideas for traveling back in time and saving the world, not one thing has gone the way he wanted it to, and there is no denying that he has completely lost control. He doesn't want to dwell on the plausibility that he maybe never had much of it in the first place.

All of a sudden it all seems so utterly _hopeless_ that he feels the sorrow and self pity he tries not to indulge, begin to take him over. He hardly hears the way the conversation continues… it doesn't matter, since it's only seconds longer before Piper takes Wyatt by the hand and slowly meanders down the corridor at a pace she allows him to set. Something about stubbornness, and not giving up, but all he knows is that he can't stay here any longer. He waits impatiently for Leo to leave, and then he does too.

* * *

Time passes, but not enough time, before the orbs come in, far too bright against the night sky, and Leo appears. Immediately, Chris is annoyed. It occurs to him that it is long past time he finds a new thinking place, because the whole point in reflection is to do it alone, and the bridge is getting very crowded now that every orber and their mother seems to come straight here whenever he's not accounted for.

"Can we talk?"

If Leo thinks they're going to bond now just because in the distant future, Leo is, in the vaguest sense of the word, his father, he's wrong.

"There's nothing to talk about."

"I think there is. Quite a bit, actually."

There it is; that pretentiousness that is the marked difference between the father he knew and the man that stands before him. As long as it's there, remaining distant, focusing on the horizon and almost absently answering Leo's comments, it's practically too easy. This man is not his father.

"It doesn't matter."

"It does to me, Chris. You're my son; I think I deserve to know what I did that's so bad."

Deserve? _Deserve?_ Really? In a split second his gaze drifts to Leo and back again, and in a split second, he knows he's made a mistake. Because his father's, _Leo's_, face has softened slightly, and for some reason, the memory of that night comes to his mind again and by the time he realizes it's happening, it's too late to stop it.

"_Come on, it's late."_

"_You go on up. I'll meet you there in a minute."_

_He hears the sound of his mother's footsteps recede, and then to his horror, the heavier footsteps of his father move in the direction of the laundry room. He's trapped; he can't orb without giving himself away, so in a last ditched effort to save face, he makes himself invisible. It's a parlour trick he picked up at magic school years ago._

"_Chris?" _

_His dad is standing in the doorway now, leaning casually against the frame as his gaze flits expertly across the small space searching for the slightest sign of movement. Chris holds his breath._

"_Christopher," He sighs, "I __**know **__you're in here, I can feel you. Enough."_

_Chris reluctantly makes himself visible. "How'd you know?"_

_There's a pause, as if Leo isn't quite sure how to address this, but eventually he speaks._

"_You were… pretty angry just now. Right before your mom went upstairs."_

_Chris shakes his head. "I'm not angry dad. Really. Not anymore."_

"_I love you, buddy."_

"_I know."_

"_I'm trying really hard here."_

"_I know."_

For a moment he isn't sure he covers it up in time; he knows his face must have flushed, because Piper is his mom and his face almost instantly floods red when he feels like crying the same way hers does, but it's dark and Leo doesn't see, and then Chris is back in control.

He doesn't know why he bothers to respond, Leo neither deserves an answer, nor has he earned one, but his mouth opens and the words begin to trickle out, and then he doesn't care, because it's not going to make a difference anyway. Leo won't know the difference between a half truth and the whole truth, so he says the words he _knows _will hurt him. The words he had never remembered to say to his father when he visited despite how badly he convinced himself he wanted to in the time between. He has waited ten years to get this chance to wound him.

"You were never there for me. You were there for everybody else; for Mom, Wyatt… half the world. But you were never there for me. You didn't have the time."

"So, maybe you came back from the future not just to save Wyatt; maybe you came back to save us, too."

The presumptuousness of his tone, of that very statement, causes tears to burn Chris' eyes again; hot, angry. He's furious, he's heartbroken, he's a swirling vortex of ambivalent emotions just like his father, like _Leo_, and he hates that similarity. He _hates _that they have something in common and he _hates _that he's well on his way to not being able to hate this version anymore either, because he will no longer be able to count on that coldness from Leo that has brought him this far. Because this stupid, stupid man before him can't just _let it go._ And there it is again; that loss of control, that knowledge that he's _failing _over and over again at even the simplest of things. And he can't be here anymore.

"I doubt it."

As he orbs away, he vows to find a new place.


End file.
